I?ve been traveling throughout California attending art auctions looking
for unique quilts. I have had a lot of success. I have found so many
quilts that you could tell were filled with thousands of hours of careful
planning and stitching.

I was attending at art auction in Orange and found a wonderful quilt.
The quilt was from the Civil War era and was made in the design of
Blazing Stars. There was a wonderful appliqued red and green swag-like
border. The center of the quilt has a feathered heart hand quilted.

The art auction that I went to in San Bruno had a fabulous quilt that was
made in the 1860s. The quilt was hand appliqued using cheddar, red and
green cotton solid fabrics. The background was white and the border has
a meandering flowering vine. It was truly special.

I found a great quilt that was made in 1894 while I was at an art auction
in Rancho Cucamonga. The style of the quilt was really fun. It was
called a Victorian Crazy Quilt. There was so much elaborate hand
embroidery over every seam and within the blocks, it was magnificent.

I was on vacation in Napa and attended an art auction that had several
really nice quilts. The one that I won was made in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania and was completed in the 1870s. I like the design called
Ocean Waves. The chain had earth green and chocolate brown triangles
that were pieced with exceedingly fine skill and precision. The border
and background color was warm, cadmium orange.

The quilt I found at an art auction in Paradise was an 1840′s thin,
cotton Quaker quilt, which measures 108″ x 88″ and had 10 stitches per
inch. It was a Quaker cotton wedding quilt. The top border, near the
pillows, had a blue print and each side and the bottom had wide borders
with North Carolina Quilt blocks in each corner. There were two rows of
North Carolina Lilies in the center, and one row on each side facing
outward.

The quilt made its way into the art auction because someone made the
decision to sell some of the great historic heirlooms that were passed
down through her family to her. I was very fortunate to acquire this
heirloom that had passed through the many generations of Quaker families.
Now I own one of the great Pennsylvania Quaker masterpieces.

Log cabin quilts are a design that I have always liked. My grandmother
made a quilt using this design for me when I was twelve. I found one
made in a similar fashion at an art auction Los Gatos. The quilt was
made in the 1870s and was made by Mennonites.

I was lucky to find the art auction, it was difficult to find. The quilt
is just fantastic. The light and dark design of this quilt has a red
center on one side with two green bars, two cinnamon bars and two blue
bars and then two red bars and on the other side of the red square in the
center are two yellows, two black and white stripe, two lovely Lancaster
blue bars, and two peppermint stripe bars.

There was an art auction in Huntington Beach that advertised quilts and I
was really happy with the pieces that I found there. The quilt that I
bought had a pictorial motif, like an album quilt, with a lot of
interesting designs. Each block was quite different and special.